by Heather Levy
Eric stared at her for a long time, hoping his wide eyes told her to watch what she said to him.
He chose his words carefully, knowing the police were monitoring everything. “Why do you think that?”
“Your father was giving Vickie money, probably to keep her quiet about Caleb. Meredith pretty much admitted it.” Sam tucked her hair behind her ear. “I think he wanted to get rid of Caleb since he was proof of what he did, and Vickie helped him and then extorted money from him when Caleb survived. She probably wanted to keep him close to her somehow. Meredith said Vickie would’ve done anything for him.”
Vickie would’ve sucked anything she could out of his father. He still couldn’t figure out what her motive to kill him would be.
“Your mom knew about the money,” Eric said. “She told me when she came this morning.”
Surprise raced across Sam’s face, and he realized Jeri had never mentioned it to her. He couldn’t think of any reason why she would withhold the information from her own daughter.
“I think Isaac stopped sending Vickie money,” Sam said.
“But why would he stop?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he got tired of being her puppet.”
He could see that. His father would hate not having control over a situation.
“Eric.” Sam’s eyes hardened into cold, black marbles. “Vickie…she killed her—the baby. She did it just like she tried with Meredith, and Isaac instigated it all.”
Hearing her say it, Eric knew in his gut it was true and the words reached a hand deep in him, yanked his heart out of his chest for a second.
He cobbled together the only words that would form. “Vickie knew about you. I went to Anadarko and spoke with her and she knew about you.”
And he didn’t put it together. How had he not thought of it, Vickie helping his father get rid of a child that could compete with her ability to blackmail? Maybe she threatened his father, said she’d tell the police about what he did to Meredith if he didn’t get rid of Sam’s pregnancy.
Sam leaned forward in the plastic seat. “What they did to me—I can’t get pregnant.” She looked down at her lap, her mouth tight as she inhaled deeply. She looked back up at him, her eyes shining with tears. “She can’t get away with it.”
He couldn’t believe he had never thought of the possibility, and here Sam was telling him she couldn’t have children and he knew why she hadn’t told him before, because she knew he wanted a family. He wanted to kill Vickie. He wanted to break through the Plexiglas and hold Sam, tell her it didn’t matter, it didn’t change his feelings for her, and she was wrong to think it.
“I’m not going to watch you go down for what she did,” Sam said.
He saw pure revenge on her face.
“Sam, don’t—”
She flashed her eyes at him.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I won’t.” She paused, a heaviness in her eyes. “I think I’m going to tell the detectives about it.”
“Sam.”
“I think Meredith will too.”
Eric shook his head. If Sam told the detectives what happened to the baby, they might suspect her of the murder, and it definitely wouldn’t help him.
An officer interrupted them, informed them the visitation time was up. Sam stood, slinging her purse over her right shoulder.
“Just wait,” Eric said. “Think about it first.”
“I will.”
Sam looked at the phone in her hand, acted like she was going to hang it up. She stopped and pressed it back to her ear. She opened her mouth slightly, saying nothing. He listened to her gentle, even breathing as they watched each other. The tenderness in her eyes as she looked at him, he wanted to reach through the glass and snatch it before she hid it away again.
“Be careful in there, Eric.”
“I will.”
She smiled at him.
“I love you, Sam.”
She looked down, her smile faded, and the hope of hearing her say those three words back to him dissolved. In that moment, Eric wanted to be his cellmate, awash in a world of withdrawal that at least distracted from reality.
“I—I’ll get you out of here.”
Chapter 49: Sam, 2009
Every time Sam thought about telling the detectives about what Isaac and Vickie did to her, a sweat broke out over her entire body, and she couldn’t catch her breath. She had weaned herself off her anxiety medication several years before, but she felt she needed some now.
She went to her purse laying on her kitchen table, opened it, and eyed her handgun. She thought about Meredith’s comment about Sam needing a bigger dog if she was going to blame Vickie for Isaac’s murder. Since then, she had kept her gun with her.
She took several deep breaths, released them slowly as she imagined squeezing a lemon, how her old therapist taught her, but she didn’t feel any calmer.
She looked over at Zeus, who sat by the front door, anxiously awaiting to be walked.
Sam took him around the block. They passed some neighbor kids running through sprinklers, their giggles so carefree as the sun kissed the approaching evening.
As she walked back toward her house, she noticed an old Buick Regal she didn’t recognize parked farther down the street.
When Sam pulled out her keys to open her front door, she sensed movement behind her. She turned around and saw a woman wearing cutoff jean shorts and a green T-shirt standing on her patio.
The woman had dyed fiery red hair that didn’t quite reach her roots and a nasty smile on her face.
Vickie.
Sam froze, her heart pounding outside of her body.
Zeus loudly barked, and she wished right then he was a biter.
That’s when she saw the gun in Vickie’s hand.
“Put the dog in the back,” she told Sam.
The only way to the backyard was through the house. Sam glanced around. The only neighbors out were the kids playing down the street.
“Do it now.” Vickie raised the gun higher.
Sam opened her front door and led Zeus down the hallway to the back of the house, Vickie following her. Zeus immediately started barking and scratching at the back door after Sam forced him into the yard. She pressed her body against her washer and dryer, the already cramped utility space full of Vickie and her gun.
“Go to the living room.” Vickie’s voice was low and full of threat.
Sam’s heart shot up into her throat as she walked to the front part of her house. Her phone, her gun—both in the kitchen—seemed miles away.
Vickie pointed to the couch. “Sit.”
Sam stepped backwards toward the couch, almost tripping over one of Zeus’s dog toys.
“What’s going on?” Sam said, her voice thin and broken. “Who are you?”
“You know who I am.” Vickie narrowed her eyes. “You were going to talk to the police about me.”
Sam stared at her, eyes wide and trying to appear ignorant to Vickie’s insinuation.
“I don’t kn—”
“Cut the bullshit,” Vickie said. “My daughter called me, told me what you said to her. Said I’d never see my grandson again.” She snorted. “Like she ever let me see him.”
Sam bit the inside of her bottom lip to keep from screaming. She had no idea why Meredith would tell her mother.
“Why did Isaac give you money?” Sam asked. “Because of Caleb? He rapes your daughter and you used the result to get money from him, didn’t you?”
Vickie shook her head, smiling. “Isaac always said you were a smart girl. Not smart enough not to get yourself knocked up, though, huh?”
Rage flushed Sam’s face, her jaw tight, teeth grinding.
“In a way, we helped you.” Vickie sneered. “You weren’t tied down with a kid. Got to go to college and get your little degree. You should thank me.”
“Fuck you.”
Sam w
anted to spit on the woman’s grinning face.
“What do you want from me?” Sam said. “You want me to give you money like Isaac did?”
Vickie’s cackle went straight through Sam’s chest. She knew that laugh, had heard it that day in the shack.
“You killed him, didn’t you?” Sam felt dazed, like this was a dream and she’d wake up any moment. “Why? Because the money stopped or because he didn’t love you?”
Vickie flinched as if Sam had hit her. She licked her lips, her eyes shifting like someone would pop out and surprise her.
“Why did you kill him?”
“He did love me,” Vickie said.
“So much that he left you.”
Sam clenched her jaw to prevent herself from saying more that could get her shot.
“He said he would come back, to be patient.” Vickie took a step closer and Sam pressed her back into the couch. “I knew you would ruin him. I told him so. I told him not to go back.”
Vickie’s voice trembled on her last words, her eyes welling up, and Sam knew she was so close, so close to hearing the truth. At the same time, she was terrified to hear it.
“Did he go back to Blanchard after he attacked Eric and me?” Sam said, her voice sounding detached and far away.
Vickie ignored her question, stared hard at her and blinked, eyes shining from her tears.
She aimed the gun at Sam’s heart. “What did you and Eric do to him?”
Chapter 50: Arrow, 1994
Arrow swore he heard Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” floating through the leafless trees in the dense woods. He knew it was impossible. The farmhouse was almost a half-mile away from where he stood, waiting. He pretended he was back at the house, sitting at the kitchen table, watching Grandma Haylin roll out dough for her famous gingerbread cookies, the Christmas music from the small portable radio chiming throughout the house.
He wanted to be by the fire doing nothing, just sitting and squinting at the Christmas tree lights and wait for the snow to come. It felt like it was coming. He tightened his hold on his pocketknife, ran his frozen thumb over the handle.
Sam was taking too long. He started to wonder if his father guessed what they were planning and did something to her. There was no way. They had been careful, never talking until they absolutely knew they wouldn’t be overheard.
Jeri had left early that morning to visit her sister in Dallas, and Grandma Haylin was busy at the house. This was the best time, the only time to make sure his father paid for what he did to Sam.
Sam was supposed to bring his father here, past the large fallen elm, its insides hollowed out. Arrow’s plan was to wait, to watch, and find the perfect moment to strike.
He heard the distant crunch of leaves and twigs and hid behind a thick pine tree nearby. Sam entered the small clearing near the dead elm and looked around, eyes searching. He waited and waited, breath held, but he didn’t see his father anywhere.
“Arrow?” Sam said, barely loud enough for him hear.
Something was wrong. She scanned her surroundings again, but Arrow didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to know why his father wasn’t with her.
“Where are you?”
He closed the knife, shoved it into his back pocket and moved away from the pine tree. Sam caught sight of him. She slowly walked toward him, her eyes pink and mouth trembling.
“I—I couldn’t.”
Anger coiled up from inside his chest, struck fast and deep before he could stop it.
“What do you mean you couldn’t?”
“I just…I’m sorry, I couldn’t do it.”
“Why? Because you love him, is that it? You fucking love him after what he did?”
“No, that’s not it! I tried. I went to the barn and I talked to him, suggested we go out here, and he wanted to after he finished with chores, he wanted to but I just—I left because I’m not—I can’t….” She took a full breath, her exhale a tiny white cloud. “I can’t kill someone. We can’t kill someone. That’s not us.”
“But it’s who we have to be, or he’ll keep going and going until you’re dead and then I’ll want to be dead too and it won’t matter if he’s alive. It won’t fucking matter, so we have to. Don’t you see?”
Sam shook her head, tears rolling down her cheeks.
“No.” She took his hand. “I don’t want you to be like him, and you’ll be like him if you do this. We both will. You know that.”
He looked away from her, an ache deep in his throat.
“Eric, please. We’ll leave. We’ll…I don’t know, do something.”
“Like what—tell your mom? Tell your grandma, the police?” He was serious but heard his questions come out in a mocking tone.
Sam let go of his hand and backed away from him.
“You’d still love me for helping you kill your father? You can really, honestly say you would?”
He swallowed but the ache was still there in his throat.
She was right. He wouldn’t look at her the same way. He wouldn’t look at himself the same. But it was too much to imagine his father going on in life, moving on to the next person to hurt after Sam. He could leave with Sam, really leave this time and figure things out along the way. They were old enough to work. They could manage it somehow.
But he was only sixteen, Sam seventeen. They didn’t know how to pay bills, and he only knew how to drive around the farm, Sam around town on rare occasion. They didn’t have a car, a place to live, furniture. They didn’t have anything.
He felt trapped, the breath escaping his lungs into the cold air. He sucked in more air, in and out, faster and faster, face tingling and numb, and Sam held his arms.
“Hey,” she said, gentle as to a child, “we’ll figure it out, okay? Okay? I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. Not without you.”
He tried to nod but he couldn’t. Sam hugged him tight, her gloved hands moving to his face. She tried to hold eye contact with him, but he didn’t want her to see the tears that formed so he turned his head. She kissed his cheek, right where the tears streamed down, and then she kissed his mouth. Her lips pressed into his until he kissed her back, mouth open, warm breath exchanged slow at first and then urgent. Her hands moved from his cheeks to his hair, his back, fingers pressing him closer, hands to his waist, tugging, his hands on her hips, pressing, pressing but not enough, not nearly enough.
He didn’t have gloves on, his hands ice seeking warmth under her coat, her sweater, and she gasped when he found skin, bra pushed up. This was crazy, he knew, them out in the open, snow about to fall, and he didn’t care. He only cared about Sam and how she felt in his arms right then, the relief that she was here with him and she didn’t want him to be anyone else and they could still be together, and no one could stop them. No one.
“Get your fuckin’ hands off her.”
Sam froze in his arms, her face bone white. They both turned to see his father at the edge of the clearing, maybe ten or fifteen feet from them, he wasn’t sure.
“You,” his father drew out, his eyes boring into Sam. “I knew it. And you—”
Arrow’s instinct was to shrink under his father’s glare, but he didn’t. He took ahold of Sam’s hand.
His father lunged toward them, grabbed Sam by the hair and jerked her into his arms, her back against his chest, a knife at her throat. She cried out and Arrow reached to grab her back until his father swiped the knife at him.
“Let’s show him what kind of whore you are. Let him see what he wants to protect so much.”
Sam shook her head, her sobs increasing as Arrow’s father pushed her against a tree. He kept his eyes on Arrow, darting back and forth from Sam. When his father grabbed Sam’s throat and squeezed hard, Arrow rushed a few steps forward before his father pressed the knife to Sam’s cheek. Arrow stopped dead.
“Don’t be stupid, son.”
His father lessened his hold on Sam’s throat, and she gasped for air.
“She’s so innocent, huh?”
“Let go of her!”
Hand still on Sam’s throat, his father unbuttoned her jeans and yanked them down. Sam’s sobs were uncontrollable now and Arrow’s heart thundered in his ears.
His father turned Sam around, pressed her face against the bark of the tree. Her backside was petal white except for the deep purple bruises, some so dark they looked black.
“Look at this. She asked for this. She wanted it. She begged me for it and I gave it to her. You want to save her, son? From what? What she wants?”
Sam continued to cry, the side of her face shoved against the tree as she said, “I didn’t, I didn’t.”
A million thoughts swarmed Arrow’s head, none connecting, none making sense except for the one screaming that his father had a knife to Sam and he had to protect her.
“She’s a good liar, don’t let her fool you.”
“Let her go!”
His father laughed, mirthless. “You’ll never be able to give her what she needs.”
He flipped Sam around, hand tightened on her neck.
“Stop! She can’t breathe!”
His father ignored him, turned his back for just a moment as he hissed something in Sam’s ear.
Arrow felt like he was out of his body, like his rage would tear him apart. Everything was slow and fast at once as he pulled his knife from his back pocket, opened it, and charged.
The grunt his father made, the carnal sound of it, was almost like pleasure. He let go of his own knife and reached his hands back, touched the knife stuck there in his shoulder blade, and turned to face Arrow.
All color slipped from his father’s face as he continued to claw behind him like there was an itch he couldn’t reach.
“Oh, shit!” Sam’s voice rasped out at seeing the lodged knife.
Without hesitation, she wrapped both hands around the hilt and yanked until the knife came free. She didn’t aim any better than Arrow had and stabbed his father’s upper back. It was a shallow wound, and his father swung around fast, slamming Sam hard into the tree behind her, her jeans still halfway down her legs. She held onto Arrow’s knife, clearly stunned and hurting, but his father easily took it from her, his breath coming out in ragged, white puffs in the frigid air.
